Sorry, missed it. Figured it would be in every post if it had broken here, and didn’t scroll up enough.
Let's Talk Exten$ions...
- Thread starter Pozo the Clown
- Start date
I don't think it would take that much. It would involve a few injuries and poor seasons, timed with pending FAs, but it's hardly outside the realm of the imaginable.
Nothing Dave Dombrowski has done since he arrived in Boston would suggest that we should worry about the bolded.
Should Bregman's deal figure into this discussion? He's not quite in the same atmosphere as Mookie, Trout, Harper, Machado... .but less than $25 M per season seems low.
No because he was pre-arb, controlled for four more years. He’s a better comp for Beni.
It's not that low considering he's still four years away from free agency. His AAV for this year shot up from $640K to almost $17M with that extension. On a typical trajectory, he was probably looking at ~$40-45M before he hit free agency. So by that math, $55-60M for the first couple years of a free agent deal starting in 2023 isn't unreasonable. He ultimately took a discount but not necessarily a huge one.
It's hard not to be a little concerned. These deals are done with ownership, and Henry was definitely in on the last screwup. Plus 8/200m for Betts is kind of insulting. I couldn't tell if there was a little irritation in his comments but I wouldn't blame him.
Also, where is Xander's market now? 5/125 with an opt out? ie the JD deal?
8/200 for Mookie after his 2017 season, with 3 years of control left, wasn't remotely insulting.
Yeah, 8/200 was on the table at roughly the same time that Mookie went to arbitration to win $10.5M as his 2018 salary. Can't really call it insulting. Seems like a reasonable buy out of his arb years plus five free agency years. Figure his arbitration salaries at 10.5+20+28(?) and that leaves about 140M over those five years ($28M per). Likely lower than anyone would project him to get as a free agent, but still a reasonable offer pre-MVP season.
He's a human being. Nomar was on his way to first ballot HOF. Mookie is taking a risk but that's his choice. Time will tell if it was the right one. Hopefully it works out for him.
Not if you take Fangraphs valuations seriously. In 2017 he was coming off a season of 5.3 fWAR, 8.3 in 2016, and 4.8 as a rookie. By their $9m/win rate, in his worst season he was worth $43million to the team. In his best season nearly $75m. So yeah, buying five of his prime years at $25m based on that track record alone is insulting.
It probably warrants a separate discussion, with people actually good at math (not me), but I think we talk about the value of WAR in overly simplistic terms - terms that teams do not universally follow. No player's been given a contract for $43M/year, let alone $75M, for any length of time, and certainly not for 8 years. Either teams depreciate the expected value of players far more than the standard .5 WAR people use here, or they don't see the $/WAR equation as constant or linear and use some risk factors to reduce the expected WAR over time. The longer contracts go, the more money that's involved, the less it seems that players get "per expected WAR."
By your math above, Trout took, what? A 40% discount? Given he said yes, I don't think he found the Angels' offer insulting. 8 years, $200M would have placed Mookie in the top half dozen or so highest paid players after 2017, before he had won the MVP. I don't see how he or anyone could find that "insulting."
Or in short, I don't take Fangraphs' WAR valuations seriously (or I take them with at least a huge grain of salt).
Fair points, players don't operate on this formula strictly speaking. The market is fluid but it's fair to say that there's a maximum value ceiling , now firmly established by Trout's deal, which redirects back from strict fWAR numbers.
But if I'm Mookie last winter, I'm seeing:
* several $30m AAV contracts (as of last winter, Kershaw, Cabrera, Scherzer, Greinke, Price) and the knowledge that Harper and Machado would be next, expecting much more;
* Total contracts pushing past $300m (e.g. Stanton, who dreams of being as good as Mookie, at $325)
* his fWAR or bWAR putting him up against whatever that maximum contract value ceiling is -- way beyond Harper and comparable a year ago to Machado; and finally
* baseball revenues going up while owners are slow to pay top stars, possibly in collusion, where it really may start to get insulting to the top players.
What would he have expected after 2017 for basically all of his prime? A lot more than David Price. $25m is a big discount. The Globe has a story out today about Mookie knowing what his value is and insisting on it. Offering 8/200 was a waste of his time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it hurts the Sox to ask. We aren't in full on Lester territory. But when you open that low, you don't look terribly serious, and the Sox' next offer can't be another lowball, especially after all the deals that have happened since the first one.
I guess the question is why do the Red Sox have to look terribly serious when offering him a deal that includes years for which they already have control? With three years of control and an obvious luxury tax crunch coming, it makes no sense to offer him a "serious" deal in line with contracts like Cabrera or Stanton (or the Machado and Harper deals to come). The whole point of offering an extension is for the player to exchange a bit of his potential earnings for the security of a long term deal way before he otherwise would be able to get it.
If they're still sitting on 8/200 or there about next winter, when he's a year away from free agency (like Lester was), then we should be concerned about upsetting/insulting Betts. I don't envision DD doing that, however. He's not Cherington. He's not Theo. He's not afraid to pay market rate for a free agent/free agent to be.
Fairly obvious, but I hate that DD is already talking this way. Hopefully he's just talking about Porcello leaving.
More from Heyman -- sounds like DD's trying to squelch ongoing negotiation talk:
I know Heyman's not always the most reliable source, but I think these are worth sharing since this is all coming straight from DD:
More from Heyman -- sounds like DD's trying to squelch ongoing negotiation talk:
I know Heyman's not always the most reliable source, but I think these are worth sharing since this is all coming straight from DD:
Last edited:
He also said that Eovaldi was going to make a lot of money right after the WS. And then signed him for fairly reasonable dollars.
It kind of sucks seeing all of these other teams signing their stars to extensions, while the Sox don't appear close to extending anyone. Are they just gonna let everyone go to free agency and risk losing everyone?
Take it easy Chicken Little, the sky is not falling because they haven't extended their free agents to be yet. Look at this past winter's market. It's not like if they don't have a guy signed before he hits free agency, he's signing somewhere else the moment he's allowed to.
Those teams signing their stars to extensions aren't up against the luxury tax ceiling like the Sox are. Whether we like it or not, there is a limit to what the team is willing to spend. That limitation doesn't mean everyone is gone, but it obviously means not everyone can stay.
Yep, this is not good seeing this. And frankly, it's bullshit. We're talking about a team that brought in somewhere around $500 million in revenue last year, on top of the money they print from Liverpool... and they are seemingly guaranteeing that they will be gutting the team after this year. I really don't wanna hear about how it's tough financially when this team basically prints money.
Yeah, well I'm not letting them off the hook because of the luxury tax. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what this team brings in in a year. This team is making Henry, Werner and co tons and tons of money, and if they gut the team because of luxury tax, well frankly that's bullshit and none of us should see that as acceptable.
You (might) know that the penalty isn't just the luxury tax.
They are absolutely going to lose multiple star players. They were operating in a window with this group that ends this year. I've enjoyed it so far and I hope you have too. The guy I (all of us?) most want to keep is Betts, but I'm not sure what could happen between now and October that would substantially bump Mookie's number..
Ed: I have confidence that the next window will look a little different but also be successful
If they let Sale, Xander and JD walk that'd be pretty damn near close to gutting. They aren't even talking to JD and Xander and they're probably low-balling Sale. I'm preparing for all three to not come back.
The Red Sox are right up against the second level of luxury tax, which brings draft penalties as well as financial ones if they go over. The tax is based on combined average annual value of all the contracts. Any extension for any of their players will cause the average annual value to shoot up and push them over the limit. If you're expecting anyone to be signed before the end of the season, you're going to be sorely disappointed. The possible exception would be Porcello, who probably isn't getting any more than his current $20 million going forward.
And they can’t sign anyone else to make up for losing those guys? Maybe they want Cole instead of Sale. Maybe Chavis is ready to be 90% of JD Martinez for 5% of the cost, which frees the money to sign Bogaerts. And Goldschmidt’s extension tells me JD Martinez’s salary and remaining years is about what it should be BTW.
When you’re talking about 4 players, 3 of whom are at peak value, the odds of at least one of them ending the year hurt or having a down season crushing their leverage in negotiations is actually pretty high.
And pitchers like Porcello are getting contracts for about half to 3/4 of what Porcello is currently making. See Lance Lynn’s deal and JA Happ or Morton. The odds of Porcello agreeing to a big pay cut without hitting FA are probably non existent. And for 5th starter, you could have any of the minor leaguers blossom this year and plug in a minimum salary that allows you to sign a big ticket guy.
So they'd forego potentially getting some of these players at a slight discount, plus avoid the risk of losing said players altogether in free agency, all to save a few luxury tax dollars? That's not how a team should be run, especially one as wealthy as this one.
Cole is probably going to be pretty close to as expensive as Sale, if not more so, and has no history of pitching in Boston, like Sale does. And there's no guarantee that he'll even be available, why wouldn't you just keep the guy you have? Seems to be the far safer option. And besides Cole, there is no other pitcher (at a similar age) that can even come close to replicating Sale's value, so good luck running a rotation out there with Price/Eovaldi/Erod/BJ/Hector and expecting that to be very competitive in the AL East.
Yeah, I know. They move down 10 spots in the draft. Given the uncertainty of the baseball draft, I don't see that as being a big deal and reason to not get a deal done now.
Ok. You’ve been told multiple times that there are several implications of going over the luxury tax that are significantly more important than the money to pay the tax. If you don’t start acknowledging that in your replies, it suggests you’re arguing in extremely bad faith, and thus not worth further engagement. Your move.
Ok. That’s a small start. Now keep going ... losing 10 spots actually reduces your total pool significantly impacting your ability to take players who drop due to signibility. You also lose international bonus money. You also lose part of your share of the revenue sharing pool. If you lose a free agent on a qualifying offer, you get a pick after the 4th round instead of a sandwich pick after the first round. If you sign a qualifying offer free agent, you lose your second and fifth round picks (and the money, which is more important than the pick itself) instead of just your second.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Those penalties are harsher than what I originally thought, but if, in a vacuum, the difference between losing a Sale or a Xander was signing them now and dealing with those penalties or letting it play out and losing them, I'd rather keep the player. That's just my opinion and I understand not everyone will agree. That's cool.
By the way, Alex Speier seems to be saying that the Red Sox could absolutely do extensions and not have it affect the luxury tax for 2019.
Astros reportedly pushing to extend Verlander and Cole.
To me, Cole and Wheeler are the only free agent pitchers who could reasonably replace Sale next year, and the avenues to trade for a cost-controlled frontline starter (like Taillon or Jon Gray) are thinning out. At this point I’d extend Sale and replace Porcello with a guy like Collin McHugh next year.
To me, Cole and Wheeler are the only free agent pitchers who could reasonably replace Sale next year, and the avenues to trade for a cost-controlled frontline starter (like Taillon or Jon Gray) are thinning out. At this point I’d extend Sale and replace Porcello with a guy like Collin McHugh next year.
I believe Trout is different because his new contract replaced the two years existing on his last one. So, yeah, his AAV would change. In the case of the Red Sox, they wouldn’t be changing the contracts of any of their players for 2019; they’d only be extending beyond that.
But the concerns about luxury tax implications don't go away after 2019...even if a Betts or Benintendi or Bradley extension doesn't affect the 2019 number, obviously it affects the 2020 number which is kind of important if the team desires to re-sign the likes of Sale and Bogaerts and Porcello and Martinez (or replace them with other free agents). The longer they're over the CBT threshold, the greater the penalties get. They are going to want to try to get under at some point.
In the meantime, I think their priority has to be the guys that are closer to being free agents over the guys that they have control over for a couple more years. But that doesn't mean everything or anything has to be done immediately (as in before Opening Day).
5/150 is being reported. Slight discount if healthy?? It's 1m less than Price at least.
Chris Sale wants to be a member of the Red Sox for the rest of his career and win championships for this organization.
Mookie Betts wants to be "treated fairly" despite presumably being offered a 10+ year contract extension at somewhere between $32 and $38 million a year.
The disparity speaks volumes to me.
Mookie Betts wants to be "treated fairly" despite presumably being offered a 10+ year contract extension at somewhere between $32 and $38 million a year.
The disparity speaks volumes to me.
